So Joe Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999? I wonder why we haven't heard more about that. He should have been known to the CIA as a self-styled expert on Niger before the infamous 2002 trip...and probably already knew of Iraqi interest in Nigerien uranium before the 2002 sham investigatory trip to Niger.
Check out the dates of this trip. I just ran across it about the same time I looked in on the thread so I haven't tracked down the full page yet.
http://www.ttc.org/cgi-binloc/searchTTC.cgi?displayZop+1664
I have not been posting for the past day or so as I've been following the money. You are not going to believe what I'm finding...okay, maybe you will but the rabbit hole is very, very deep.
JANUARY 2003 : (AL ZAHAWIE, "RETIRED IN JORDAN" - IS RECALLED BACK TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ; HE IS TAKEN TO MEET UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS) But last January, al-Zahawie was summoned back to Baghdad for what he had expected would be a request to help Iraq's Foreign Service plan for deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz's planned visit to the Vatican. Instead, upon landing in Baghdad, al-Zahawie was taken to meet with UN weapons inspectors. Five inspectors interviewed him in a 90-minute session, he says.
"They asked why I went [to Niger], why I was chosen, when I left Rome and whether there were any other Iraqi diplomats at the Vatican," he says. "But then they asked who had the seal of the embassy and where I had left it."
That's when al-Zahawie got wind of some kind of foul play.
Italy had handed over cables from al-Zahawie to the Niger government announcing the trip, and other documents had pointed to his presence in Niger. But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction. The inspectors refused to show him the letter, he says, but al-Zahawie was sure he had never written it. "If they had such a letter, it had to have been a forgery," he says. The tell-tale signs of the forgery were quite obvious, he stresses. [* My note: How would he know the 'tell-tale sign' if they refused to show the letters to him? Shades of Joe Wilson's foreknowledge of the docs?]
Diplomatic procedure typically called for official notes between Iraq and other governments to feature a government seal, but they are typically unsigned; correspondence between an ambassador and other dignitaries would be signed but would have no seal. The letter in question had both, the inspectors admitted.[* My note: according to Zahawie, who may not have been let in on the truth] "I realized the forgery when they asked this," al-Zahawie notes. "And when I left, I thought I had told them all there was to know."
Still, the inspectors brought him in for another meeting the next day, but after al-Zahawie protested, they ended the discussion by taking a copy of his signature for further investigation. In a matter of weeks, IAEA chairman Mohammed El-Baradei told the UN Security Council that the letters supposedly detailing a Niger-Iraq uranium transaction had been forgeries.
"I thought I was exonerated," al-Zahawie says. But in case any "official authorities" doubt his version, he invites them to meet with him to discuss the matter. More importantly, he has a question of his own: Who created the forged document bearing his signature, and why? The answer may, however, prove to be as elusive as Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. - "Saddam's Niger Point-man Speaks," By HASSAN FATTAH/LONDON, Time Magazine, Wednesday October 5, 2003, via hassanfattah.com
------------- "Saddam's Niger Point-man Speaks," By HASSAN FATTAH/LONDON, Time, Wednesday October 5, 2003, via hassanfattah.com , Copyright © 2003 Time Inc.